Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Latest News Pre-Patch Announcement

I doubt they pay too much attention to us to begin with, but if that's the case I'd be pretty much resigned to be EXTREMELY UNPOPULAR among Larian employees. At least generally speaking.

I'd like to stress that I take absolutely no pleasure in it and I just do it for the greater good.

"Why are we doing that?"

"So the Movie can happen"

Ryan George is amazing. Never miss an episode.

One of the titles on the beamdog BG3 forum : "BG3's revamped DOS2 game engine vs. Infinity is analogous to Realism vs Impressionism in painting?".

I think we kinda represent the lower end of BG3 discussions xD

I totally get what he means by that - and its not a criticism of Bg3. Some of the best games I have ever played could be described as Impressionist which left a lot to the imagination and did a great job. Notable titles are the original Wasteland, Fallout 1 and 2, Ultima IV, V, VI, VIII, of course all the Infinity Engine Games, Planescape: Torment and many others.


Having said that I love the BG3 landscapes and comparing them to paintings from the Realism school is pretty accurate. Also, this is not a function of graphics improving over time. Vanilla WoW was done in a style of realism and each tile was literally hand painted - which is one of the reasons its graphics have held up pretty well over time. Classic WoW ended up using pretty much the same textures and tiles with some slight modifications.

Art Directors I think make this conscious choice and there are advantages/drawbacks to each option.

Yeah I totally wish we had more discussions like this - haha - how is Beamdog attracting all the Aesthetes?

While I'm glad to see that the principals have once again expired and gone to Hell, and that Swen will finish mowing Satan's lawn while the rest of the gang does Beelzebub's dirty laundry (because it's nice to see them doing something useful), I am most happy to see that this time, apparently, the mini-movie "From Hell They Came 2" will be released to the public at the same time that the patch goes live! That's a nice change, indeed, so I hope I got it right. (No more "Here's the movie, patch will be along RSN.")

Without trying to hit a negative note, I have to say that I distantly recall information from the last big patch--patch #4--indicating that (a) There would be no more 'big patches,' (b) There would instead be smaller patches released about every two weeks, and (c) There would be no more lost saves moving ahead. Please correct me if my memory has failed here...;)

I think it would be a nice gesture if Jess might like to say something like, "I know that we said yada, yada, yada, at patch 4, but I had to have a tumor the size of a large watermelon removed from my big toe, and Swen--well, Swen--Swen had a brain transplant just two weeks back and we are still waiting to see if the new brain took--nah, just kidding! It took as far as we can tell. And he told me I could tell you about it! So this is why we've had to change plans!" Etc.

I mean, just a little acknowledgement of the previous information given at patch #4 would have been nice. So all of us EA folks know we are not going mad.

Anyway, I had planned to start over after the next patch as I had a feeling it would be a whopper and I can see no point to forcing myself to use old saves that may force me to ignore some new content this patch possibly installs. So that's not a big deal for me, actually. So looking forward to what comes "next week"...;)

Beamdog is the pre - bg3 forum and I guess people there might be older/ a bit more patient. And definitely more unified compared to us. Which isn't necessarily a good thing.

Beats me.
I have no idea how Beamdog would be able to attract anyone, period.

Also, I really don't think there's anything about the Infinity Engine titles that could genuinely be summarized as "impressionism" aesthetically. It's just a combination of low detail/poor image quality.
If we were talking about Disco Elysium it could hold some merit.

P.S. Fun fact: "impressionism" was originally intended as a somewhat derogatory descriptor. It came from an art critic commenting that a certain Monet painting (can't remember which one) left on him "little more than a vague impression" or something of that sort.

😂

I wonder if we’ll be getting some info on Shadowheart’s artifact. The description for “A Most Noble Sacrifice” on the BG3 website includes a picture of it and mentions the party looking for a powerful artifact. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like anyone is roleplaying a Paladin but I’m still hopeful.

I still hope that we will get more Classes und Level 5

Speaking of Beamdog's forum, recently I came across a discussion regarding changes between 2AD&D and 5e.


Seems it never came to be. Iirc there was some speculation Beamdog would make BG3. Hah. Can't say I'm disappointed, as much as I'm one of the most critical people regarding Larian's BG3.


Hey, hey. The backgrounds in the IE games are beautiful and hold really well to modern times. BG1 maybe not as much, but the rest looks great.

I think the "impressionism" comment was more, uh, conceptual than literal though. In the literal sense, I'd describe IE as going for realism, as much as it was possible back then. It's not particularly stylized.

Impressionism is more about how light is used. The lack of definition is a byproduct of that.

But in all seriousness I don't think you can define most video games graphics as being intentionally one or the other - I mean...I think anyway.

But its also not a result of old technology, outdated graphics. I think in the case of Bioware and BG1 it was mostly about budget.

Truthfully the post on the Beamdog forums was more just fun to think about.

I started wondering, is the game Valheim impressionist? It kind of feels like it might be.

I have no objections here (especially comparatively to their time) but that has nothing to do with the style used.

Incidentally, since we are on topic, if you go back to look at a lot of the prerendered backdrops in BG 1 and 2 as they were originally worked on, you'll realize that they were often a tadbit less charming/artistically pleasing that the low res let us imagine them to be.
We tend to remember them as "very painterly" while in reality a lot of details (buildings etc) were touched-up and not particularly detailed 3D studio renders. Not to mention amusing little details like the streets made by scanning pictures of coffee grains and relying on the low resolution to hide the fact.
A game like POE II Deadfire, to name one, is not only technically more advance (for OBVIOUS reasons, given its release date) but frankly speaking offers a lot of "pictorial" art far better than anything included in BG1 and 2.
It was eve more of a mixed bag, artistically speaking, with the two Icewind Dales and their weirdly mismatched sprites (you could occasionally see creatures realized in one style while some other were completely different), often recycled assets from some of their past titles.

Yeah, well, the truth is that thread only has a handful of posts in it. The Beamdog forum is pretty much dead. Only a very tiny number of people just repeat-post there. It's a really pathetic forum tbh.

More is known about this. Apparently, the game was a follow-on of sorts, but not a direct sequel, to Planescape: Torment. It had been worked on for about two years, and had Dave Gaider from Bioware as lead writer. But WotC was not happy (and let's keep in mind WotC has been quite generous with their licensing recently) and killed the project around the same time that Larian was given the green light. And, Beamdog has now also been told by WotC that they can only continue to work on enhancements to the old games and not on any new content for any D&D IP.

Will Patch 5 be available at the 8 of July?

That's the general assumption and what SEEMS to be implied in the way Larian worded the announcement, but who knows, really.

...But what's more important, we'll get some weird-ass Twitch chat + LARPing interaction. Yay.

Here's a short preview:

Well, if one of them is Larping as a Jester, their fate is sealed.

That is soo negative. :-/
On the bright side, in that case they read all our feedback. ^_^